


parallel trenches

by greenbriars



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (kinda), Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Cheerleaders, Dare Me Fusion, Enemies to Lovers, Harry Potter & Tom Riddle Attend Hogwarts Together, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jealousy, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:54:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26235988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbriars/pseuds/greenbriars
Summary: Dumbledore thinks there's nothing like a little friendly rivalry to get results, but if there's anyone in the entire world who deserves to be basket-tossed twenty feet into the air and forced to confront their own fragile mortality, it's Tom Riddle.A high school enemies-to-lovers AU with a side of competitive cheerleading, helicopter parents, and Tom Riddle's fuck-off silver Porsche.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Comments: 30
Kudos: 98
Collections: Tomarry Reverse Big Bang 2020





	1. a gauntlet, thrown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i told myself i wouldn't write a hs au ever again and then i saw novanica's art and blacked out and when i came to i had written my first thousand words

1.1

Harry storms out of the Headmaster's office, brushing violently past his two closest friends in the process.

"What did Dumbledore want?" asks Hermione, quickly adjusting her pace to keep up with him as they emerge onto the immaculate front lawn. His vice-captain, Ginny, side-steps to take up his right flank.

Harry buries his hands in his red-and-grey varsity jacket and seethes. The air is a dry rasp in his throat, too brisk for September, which means summer is fading fast—and competition season will be upon them soon, faster than they can blink.

“Would you believe me if I told you Dumbledore has located a cool fifty thousand dollars of extra funding in his couch cushions and instead of divvying it up fairly he wants me and Riddle to drag our teams to the homecoming? To somehow _prove_ ourselves worthy of the money?”

Ginny makes a scoffing sound. “What does homecoming have to do with anything?”

Bitterly, he answers, “Maybe he thinks if more of the movers and shakers at the school show up, so will the rest of the student body, like obedient sheep.”

As he says this, someone brushes by him. Someone in trackies and a cotton shirt that’s still crisp, dark hair perfectly coiffed, not a strand out of place even though he had come straight from practice. Riddle hadn’t even bothered to look concerned, after the initial excitement of being pulled into the Headmaster’s office in the middle of the day.

As if he can hear his thoughts, Riddle smirks, even teeth flashing in the dying light.

Harry narrows his eyes at him, lip curling, but he stalks off without another word.

1.2

The shrill blast of the whistle screeches through the gym.

"Again," he calls, letting it fall to his chest. Before him, Gabrielle Delacour struggles to her feet, her silver hair limp with sweat. Her arms are shaking, and the two bottom bases look at each other and then at him, nervous.

"Eyes on your girl," he barks, and Millie Bulstrode and Marietta Edgecombe look quickly away, rushing to help her up.

They've been practicing the most basic, straight ride toss for what feels like hours, because whether or not Gabrielle nails it decides which stunts they're keeping in their routine. On the benches, Hermione is in full managerial capacity. Her keen eyes notice every flaw, every hesitation. They'll go over it later, but right now Harry just wants to show them how to do it _properly_.

"One, two,” he begins, and wearily, Gabrielle jams her bright white cheer shoe on their interlocking wrists.

"Three, four." Millie and Marietta elevator her up.

"Fix, six." Gabrielle soars skywards, and Harry can almost feel his body snapping reflexively into a V, the flutter of his hair around his face, even as she plummets back to earth.

It pierces him, the yearning, quick and sharp as a thorn.

"Seven, eight." The bases jump up slightly to catch Gabrielle, and for their efforts they receive a foot to the face.

Harry sighs. Perhaps he's demanding too much from someone who barely comes up to his collarbone, but Gabrielle is the smallest girl on the squad, the one most fit to take over his spot as flyer.

 _His_ spot. But he was never going to be flyer forever, no matter that there's nothing he loves more than being at the top, loves the rubber-banded, hollow-boned feeling. The satisfaction of a perfect dismount—clean, utterly supported, all eyes on him.

And now the whole squad has paused in their own motion drills to watch the younger Delacour flounder, with her tendril limbs and her wishbone arms that she needs to _ex-_ tend _, Gabrielle!_

Ginny is tense beside him, ready at any minute to tell him to ease up on the drill. But one look from him is enough to get her to back off, because she knows as well as he does somebody's going to have to step up to the plate, and now is always better than later. 

So Ginny steps up so that they're shoulder-to-shoulder, his deputy, his faithful lieutenant.

"Listen up!" she roars, and her voice is crackling lightning in the enclosed space of the gym. "You’ve not in JV anymore. This is the Big Leagues. Regionals is in three months, and we don't have time for any pom-shaking, ass-slapping _nonsense_. Amateur hour is _over_."

The words ring through the room, and Harry spots a few of the younger ones straighten. Fleur cuts a vicious glare over to him.

He looks at all their tense, flushed faces, and feels the weight of their expectations rest heavy on his shoulders.

And, on top of that, Dumbledore's words hanging over his head like Damocles' sword.

But there's no sense in brooding about it anymore. He can't change Dumbledore's mind; ergo, Riddle must lose so that he can win, so that he can keep everything he's fought so hard to have.

It makes something simmer in him, white-hot; an underground fire.

Gabrielle's thighs tremble, a long bone bruise blooming on her forearm.

"Again," he commands.

1.3

Harry is practicing his standing back tucks with a vengeance, because if he's giving up flying and he can't bottom base, he needs to be able to tumble. So he jumps high and pulls his legs in until he's a tight little ball, tight enough to rotate a full three-sixty. Drilling them helps him work through his pent-up adrenaline, and puts him in a state where he can't think too hard or he'll flub his jumps.

He flubs them anyway.

"You're not half-bad," comes a voice behind him, coolly amused, and finally, for the first time all afternoon, Harry lands neatly in his mentally designated square. Arms up, chest high, form brace-tight and immaculate.

"Thank you," he says, privately congratulating himself on not startling. What he really means is, what do you want?

Riddle eases out of his lounge, leonine, and saunters closer. The corner of his mouth is quirked in what is objectively a very pleasant smile.

"The Headmaster's all yours," he says, with such fluid, uncomplicated grace—only the clench of his jaw gives him away. 

For a change, the smile that flits across Harry's face is genuine. Now he gets why Riddle is here, in Harry's gym, watching Harry give himself early-onset arthritis.

"Dumbledore refused to be swayed by you, did he?"

Riddle goes still.

Harry can't stop the laugh from bubbling out of his mouth. The taller boy's mouth tightens, and Harry laughs harder at the sight, his anger temporarily dissipating. Hermione would be shaking her head reprovingly if she could see him. "Poor thing," he says, as mocking as he dares. Any casual observer would think that Harry was just teasing a classmate.

All the charm and money and good looks in the world, and nothing to show for it.

"The old man’s playing the both of us," Riddle says quietly, baring his teeth. "Aren't you his golden boy? Well then, why don't you take a stab at it? Be my guest."

Harry shrugs; there's no point denying the favouritism. "Dumbledore won't listen to me now."

_Not after you've gone and cocked it up spectacularly._

Which is true. Dumbledore is even more likely to double-down on his scheme now. Still, as much as he and the old man may not see eye-to-eye, he does admire him.

And he especially loves it when he flat-out refuses to give in to the rich brats who think they run the school.

Some of the smugness must show in Harry's pleasantly neutral expression, because suddenly, something shifts in Riddle's face, the politeness stripping away like flesh from a skull.

"If that’s truly the case, then I’m wondering how much it would take to get you to drop this," he says, his gaze darkening like an ominous sky.

Harry goes still with disbelief. Then his eyes narrow, and his fingers dig into his thigh.

"What the hell?"

Riddle stands his ground. There’s no longer anything pleasant about his smile, and sometimes Harry hates this school so much, hates the entitlement that has seeped into every corner like an ink stain, an oil spill.

"Is that the best you can do?" he asks, bristling with disgust. "Resorting to buying me off?"

"Why not?" Riddle lifts a shoulder. "Everyone wants something or another. So what is it? A cheque? A connection? An _opportunity_?"

"Not everyone," Harry retorts quietly, his skin crawling, something sharp in his throat. "Not Dumbledore, and not me."

Riddle laughs with remarkable scorn. "It seems even when you have an advantage you don't know what to do with it," he says, and for a split second Harry is able to see past the careless shrugs and smiling conceit to the fact that Riddle is livid, and irritated beyond belief, and in a mood to enact violence.

Harry is entirely too familiar with that mood. Harry is entirely too familiar with being on the _receiving end_ of that mood. It makes the skin on his back twinge in the shape of a broad, meaty palm.

"I don't know what you mean," he mutters under his breath, but his breath is coming faster. He brushes past Riddle to mask the quickness of his escape, shoulders knocking in a false show of bravado. His palms are sweating.

The back of his neck prickles as he walks away, and he is inordinately grateful when he finally turns a corner and the sensation vanishes.

1.4

The next morning, Harry slips into the passenger seat of the Jeep. Hermione shifts the gear into drive, and Ginny leans across the centre console to hand him a tumbler of the coffee her mom makes—it's more sugar than coffee at this point, but he'll take whatever he can get short of mainlining the caffeine directly into his system.

"You know, I can drive you home after practice," Hermione begins.

Harry eyes his bike in the rear-view mirror— Dudley's old bike that he outgrew, latched to the bike rack—and shakes his head.

"I'm staying back after prac to train some more," he says quietly as they turn into the campus parking lot. "You should head home first."

Hermione nods and lets Ginny take over, straining the length of her seatbelt as she spends the duration of the journey going over the agenda for the day.

#

The bleachers are bustling with activity—Millie leading the varsity girls in their second set of bleacher sprints, pounding up and down the skeleton steps _one-two-three-four-pick your feet_ up _, Greengrass!_

The first match of the season is in two weeks, and the cheer committee is still arguing over which song to centre their game day routine around—the new Lizzo song, or something tried and tested by a saccharine pop singer—and the whole thing is driving Harry completely around the twist. He's the team captain, and he can't help feeling that they should be way past this stage, already piecing their routine together. What they need is a good remix, something quick and dirty, something to summon the blood, something to shake the rafters.

Someone falls into step beside him, and shakes him out of his thoughts.

“I hear big changes are underfoot,” their middle base, Narcissa, says, and Harry immediately turns around and glares at Ginny, who waves sheepishly.

She speeds up to join them, the three of them forming a line on the track, like the hands of a clock. “She would’ve found out sooner or later,” she argues.

Harry sighs. “What have you heard?”

“Fifty thousand dollars to whichever team sends more members to homecoming.”

“Sounds about right.”

“It should be easy enough,” Ginny continues. “I’ve seen the football team’s budget. That money’s barely a drop in the bucket. What’s another fifty thousand to them?”

“We could do so much with fifty thousand,” Narcissa says softly. “New equipment, new uniforms, new mats. Our own bus.”

“As if the footballers are the only ones good enough for away games,” Ginny agrees.

As one, they swivel their heads, peering through the slats to where, across the field, Tonks is being basket-tossed into the air; the way she sails upwards, ten feet, twenty, buoyed by nothing more than air and daring. A real cheerleader.

"I'd like to see them try that without breaking any bones," Ginny mutters.

Narcissa examines perfectly manicured nails with a scowl. "What I don't understand is how the school earns a fortune in tuition fees and rich alumni donations, but we still have to duke it out with the football team for funds? Remember when Malfoy singlehandedly bought the entire football team new uniforms and refurbished the boys' locker room?"

“So maybe the reward won’t mean that much to them,” he concedes. “But that doesn’t change the way Gabrielle was looking at me at the end of yesterday’s training. I’ll be lucky if even _half_ the JVs show up.”

“I’ll talk to Fleur,” Narcissa says, her feet squaring primly into the vee of a ballerina’s turnout “She’ll be able to convince Gabrielle.”

“Besides,” Ginny chimes in, “If you think you're having a hard time, imagine Riddle trying to persuade his gang of single-celled organisms."

For a fraction of a second, doubt flickers across Narcissa’s face—but Ginny catches the look and _laughs_ , full-throated.

“Then there’s only one thing left to do, to secure our win,” she says, before throwing herself into a running handspring. It’s perfect, somehow both tight and loose, elegant muscles going rock-hard in the blink of an eye. She flips her fiery hair, and the determined set of her mouth widens into a grin.

Narcissa raises an inquiring eyebrow.

“Sabotage.”

1.5

"Don't worry about the music," Hermione says, as the Jeep turns out the school gates. She'd stayed back anyway to send him home, and the sun has long since set. "I'll commission one of the music kids to make something, something that'll take us to Regionals. Maybe Luna Lovegood."

"Okay,” he hums in reply, his eyes slipping shut. He trusts her. There are a dozen tender places on his body, joining an army of older bruises.

"I know there's something you're keeping from the squad," Hermione says quietly. It's not a question. "I'm not calling you out, I won't push, I just want you to know that if or when you decide to talk about it, I'll be here."

"Thanks."

"But you should do it soon," she says, not judgmentally. She turns down Privet Drive, hands passing over the wheel with practiced ease.

"Do you think Ginny knows?" he asks.

Hermione shrugs, slowing down before a modest brick house. "Probably. She's perceptive like that, but I don't think it'll be a problem. She probably deserves to know, though, as your vice-cap."

He huffs a laugh. She's right, as always.

"Thanks for the lift," he says, and gets out.

1.6

Harry unlocks the front door to Number 4 and walks on silent, socked feet through the front hall. He's so familiar with every corner, every groove in the wooden parquet, that he doesn't need any light to see by.

There are leftovers in the fridge, which he eats cold—the microwave makes too much noise, Aunt Petunia claims—and mail for him.

He has to force himself to stop glancing over at the large, cream envelope with the impressive logo every five seconds. After washing down the tomato soup with a glass of tap water, he holds it tightly to his chest and scurries up the steps, two at a time.

One step into his room and his bag is on the floor, cheer shoes kicked off. Another step and he's sprawled on his bed. The walls are thin and the room is a matchbox in comparison to Dudley's, carved out hastily when he outgrew the cupboard under the stairs.

Beneath the harsh fluorescent lighting, he tears untidily at the envelope, and cracks open the university brochure with unsteady hands.

Thousands of teenagers all over the state must get these; Harry is no one special. But still he ghosts his fingers over the glossy images, staring at the smiling and carefully curated faces and imagines himself as one of them, mouthing the words just to taste the promise of freedom on his tongue.

Then he bypasses all of that and heads straight for the section titled 'Scholarships & Financial Aid', reading carefully the instructions and taking note of the deadlines.

Because there are things Harry cannot bring himself to say even to Hermione, things that are too embarrassing and monumental to even speak aloud, as if the sheer act of giving voice to them could wrench them from him forever. Harry knows he's nobody, really, nothing special, just a poor, unwanted boy lucky enough to have a team that listens to him, that wants to win almost as badly as he does.

But as he drifts off to sleep his mind turns back again to it, in that fluid, in-between way of semi-conscious thoughts, where his thoughts turn liquid and everything is hazy and wine-dark with possibility. He thinks about how greedy he is for things beyond his grasp, how hard he knows he must fight for his position, how tightly he has clutched this fervent flame to his chest.

He has to win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many many thanks to [of_wilderness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/of_wilderness/pseuds/of_wilderness) who took time out of their epic space opera au to beta, and all my love to vmty who sat outside with me by the water's edge vetting every single paragraph until my shoulders were sunburnt


	2. code red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the previous chapter, Dumbledore pits the two captains against each other. Riddle tries to bribe Harry. The cheer squad resolves to win, even if it means playing dirty. Harry reflects on opportunities after graduation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promised a chapter this week and i have delivered! am i happy with this? no. have i been editing this for like five months? yes.
> 
> i realise i'd written myself into a corner for the tomarry big bang so i've streamlined the plot and amended chapter 1 a little. thank you all for being so patient with me.

2.1

His squad is getting better every day.

They're locking stunts, focusing. Harry can feel it in the way his body is tightening, keeping only what is essential and bullet-hard. He can do perfect standing back tucks now, knees to nose, one after another. At night, he lies on his thin, lumpy mattress, and hears the thuds on the gym floor, feels them through his bones, the core of him.

Cheerleaders practice for months for the sake of a three-minute routine—again and again until they get it right, and then until they cannot get it wrong.

The squad’s in the know about the stakes, and, as they count down to the match against the Ravens, there’s a rush to find dates for homecoming—almost everyone eligible has been snapped up, and their mornings are a blur of lessons and breathless scheming, their afternoons golden-grooved with cheer.

In a stroke of fortune, Gabrielle starts nailing her basket toss. The way she almost looks like she’s floating at the apex steals all the air from Harry's lungs, equal parts wonder and envy. And the first time she lands with her back rod-straight, eyes clear, chin higher than Harry's ever seen it, Fleur bursts into tears.

She’s one of them now.

2.2

What Harry intended to do was simple: after today's kickoff, Narcissa was to get her father, the powerful and influential Cygnus Black, to issue extra invitations to that exclusive investment banking conference that Harry knowshe chairs, and then carefully disseminate those highly coveted invitations to select members of the public.

Everyone knows that if there's anything that elite schoolboys care for, it's networking. And if the conference happens to fall on the same day as homecoming, well, that’s just coincidence, pure and simple.

The day before, Gabrielle had kicked out that basket toss like she'd been doing it all her life, throwing in in a pike at the zenith of her ascent—knees to chest, and then straightening out so quickly that Harry had felt a tremor down to his shabby cheer shoes.

Hermione had filmed their routine, adapted from the one they ended last football season's with—lots of chorus line flips and toe touches, bodies spinning and arcing through the air, ending off with a neat hanging pyramid. When they played it back, nothing had ever looked so impossibly defiant.

It was supposed to be an easy game, after that. 

He’ll never know if someone leaked the plan to Riddle, or if the football captain figured out that something was afoot all by himself. Maybe he got tired of waiting. Maybe he just wanted to make the first move.

#

The varsity cheerleaders are in the changing rooms, brandishing sticky nozzles and glossy wands, smearing glitter on their cheekbones, painting lightning bolts from jaw to temple. Harry had bypassed them all, peeling out of his tracksuit and into a scalding hot shower, hot enough to get his blood moving, to get his head game.

He's in his cheer uniform, so brand-new and untouched that it still feels starched-stiff. With careful hands, he smooths out the creases in his cheer shorts and wipes down his only other pair of shoes, reserved for competitions only. Then he lets the girls gel his hair into submission and escapes with a minimal application of war-paint.

He arrives on the field just in time to find his JVs—and his new flyer—cornered by a motley crew of footballers.

At first he doesn't understand what he's seeing. He thinks they're chatting them up, still trying to get dates for the dance. Then he draws nearer, and he hears—

"—flying so high, aren’t you scared?" asks one of them, with beady little eyes and a jaw like a pitcher.

Another nods, his brow low over his face, giving him a perpetually heavy look. "I knew a top girl, once. She was learning one of those fancy twists you do when you're up there, and when she was coming back down, her feet came apart and she knocked out both bases."

He pauses for dramatic effect. "Blood and teeth everywhere."

" _Ooh_ ," one of the girls says. The guys nod, slow and meaningful, and Harry’s brow furrows.

What's the point of this? It's nothing but trash talk, just stories that even cheerleaders tell each other to get a reaction.

"Right," says another. This one Harry recognises—it's Malfoy, Riddle's vice-cap. A shiver of premonition skitters down his spine.

"It's not just the top girls," Malfoy says, running his hand almost carelessly through white-blond hair. "I know someone who was in the middle of a pyramid when the girl on top of her wobbled, and it was like watching a building crumble. She tried to catch another girl and then she lost her balance or something, and fell right on her back. The crack was so loud I could hear it clean across the field."

A shudder ripples through the girls. Harry’s jaw clenches.

"I heard she was paralysed for a month."

"Six weeks, actually," Malfoy says with relish, and looks up just in time to lock eyes with Harry.

And instantly, everything falls into place. 

They're trying to freak his cheerleaders out, because it's like Malfoy said: they just need a tremor in one knee, one ankle, for the entire pyramid to come crashing down. And if they falter any time between now and the homecoming dance, they'll be out of commission.

Harry’s eyes hone in on Gabrielle Delacour, who's gone from yellow to green to grey, and a sudden, sharp fearfulness lances through him. He breaks into a run.

"Get the hell away from them," he hisses, balling his hands into fists and shoving the boys aside. He’s so angry he's practically vibrating with it, his face black with rage. 

The beady-eyed one, Carrow, puts his chin up, as if to say, _What are you going to do about it?_

"Go warm up," he commands, and the girls scatter like frightened birds. But the damage is already done, his flyers' heads full of visions of skulls busting open against the unyielding ground, teeth knocked out, eyes popped.

"I told you," Riddle says flatly, from behind him. Harry turns, and finds him standing tall and majestic, the padding on his shoulders accentuating his slim waist, his hair swept gracefully above his brow. He'd been watching the whole time. "Some of us know how to press an advantage."

#

Ginny would be better for this, he thinks desperately as he races across the bleachers to nab Gabrielle before she goes too far. Dense clouds scud restlessly across the sky, even though the weather report has predicted fair weather for the whole week.

The steps are adorned with school colours, school cheers. Harry catches up to her by a giant, red H.

"Don't listen to them," he says lamely, and then immediately looks heavenward for mercy. Where the hell is Ginny? Or Fleur? He'd much rather be going toe to toe with any of the footballers. "It's just a game, nothing to sweat about."

"I know," Gabrielle says, but her voice shakes. She blinks rapidly, shimmery blue eyeshadow catching the afternoon sunlight. "I can do it."

"Are you sure? We can sub you out," he says, even though he knows they can't, not really. None of the JV flyers can do the toss, and Harry hasn't practiced with Millie and Marietta in weeks.

"Positive," Gabrielle says, balling her hands into fists.

Perhaps it's better this way—better to get it over and done with before the fear has a chance to calcify.

 _And_ , he thinks, _I can't let Riddle win._

Impulsively, he grabs her hands and folds them into his. "Listen to me," he says. "You've earned your spot at the top. Your team is counting on you. Your team is _with_ you. Eyes on you, you every step of the way."

He searches her eyes, but she isn’t looking at him. She nods, head bobbing like a marionette on a string.

"Okay." The rhinestones studding her temple wink in the light.

"Okay. Good. You'll be fine." He gets to his feet, and descends a step.

Then he swivels to face her. "But if— _if_ —you do fall, remember: keep your legs locked, and try and get them beneath you. You'll be easier to catch that way."

She blanches slightly. "Yes, captain."

He better get someone to check in on her before half-time.

#

Later, watching the video played back at quarter-speed, Harry will be able to tell that Gabrielle is a half-step behind from pretty much the second the song starts playing.

But the moment, the exact moment she freezes up—that comes later, when she puts one foot on that wrist-weaved basket, her body quivering like a plucked string. It makes Harry’s blood run cold to see it. And then she's airborne, too scared to pike, to even remember to open her arms to catch her bases' shoulders.

Or to remember Harry's last piece of advice.

One wet-noodle leg gets loose, slamming into his own shoulder, a starburst of pain quickly disregarded because it had still not been enough to slow her fall. She plunges, hard, past grasping hands and outstretched fingers, and hits the turf.

The crowd goes silent. On the screen, a pixellated Dumbledore gets to his feet.

Even at 720p Harry can see the red smear of blood, Gabrielle's chin split wide open, her face whiter than her hair. Blood dripping onto the grass.

He had moved on instinct then. He sees himself and Fleur at her side in the next instant, Fleur feeling her chin and cheeks, prying her mouth open to check that none of her teeth have been knocked out. _Oh, merde, oh, putain_. Harry, holding his arm strangely, trying to make sure she's not concussed.

Above them, the sky had darkened ominously.

Then she was being carried out to the med-bay with very little fanfare, her older sister close behind and Hermione hot on her heels, and the routine was over before they even reach the pyramid.

"It's a good thing she falls well," Ginny had muttered later as she flicked her high ponytail, hair tinsel trailing sparkles.

A big gash on her chin that won't take her out of practice, and a few minor sprains. Harry's own knee twinges in pained sympathy.

The way the ice clangs against the metal bottom of the tub in the men's changing room shocks Harry out of his stupor. It's cacophonous, loud enough to rival the noise from the stadium. Another win for the football team, go Lions, hip-hip-hooray.

Just a few minutes ago he had debriefed the squad, Hermione calm and severe by his side as she delivered reassurances, before dismissing them to get changed. The carefree energy had deserted them, leaving them looking worn and anxious. Shaken.

"You know this isn't your fault, right?" Hermione had said, but Harry can't help thinking that it is. He strips and steps into the ice bath, wincing. Icy water floods his every crevice, rushing into the webbed spaces between his fingers and the bony hollows of his ribs. He sinks and doesn't think of hypothermia, of drowning. It's so cold it's fiery hot, and he breathes through the pain, the way it hurts everywhere—which, ironically, dulls the pain in his shoulder. A massive bruise is already forming, the imprint of it matching the grooves and pocks of Gabrielle's kaepa toss shoe.

 _Ça va,_ the flyer had finally uttered. _Ça va..._

Poor Gabrielle. The glimpse he had seen of her before he was mobbed by the squad, the teachers, the nurses—her eyes wide with shock, her lip already swelling, the red gash of her mouth. And he, limp, helpless, empty-handed.

He wishes he could be more, could be the kind of captain the squad warmed up to automatically, the kind who hosted sleepovers and brunch dates and backyard jamborees—Ginny does that. She'd make a better captain, but she's said before that she's perfectly content to be his second.

"Yeah," Ginny had chimed in. "We're here for you no matter what, on the floor and off."

In increments, he stops white-knuckling the rim of the tub. His shivers have died down, his teeth no longer chattering, and his shoulder doesn't hurt anymore. He's growing numb. He imagines letting the chill seep in, bone-deep, worming beneath his ribcage and turning his heart to ice, to cold steel. He'd like to fall asleep here and never wake up.

He wouldn't, of course. He wouldn’t deprive the team of both flyers.

His timer goes off, but he stays put for another sixty seconds. The cold is invasive, and his head is full of white noise. It's almost peaceful.

What Riddle did—it was a power move unlike any other. Vicious and rife with cold calculation, head and shoulders above anything the cheer squad could have come up with. Gabrielle could have broken bones, could have been paralysed, could have _died._

In one fell swoop, Riddle had shown he was willing to play for keeps, to jeopardise life and limb to get his way. It makes a sharp-edged sensation expand in his chest, like being punched in the solar plexus.

In the quiet, forgiving dark of the changing room, Harry allows himself to picture the reporters swarming the football team, clamouring, _Riddle, Riddle! How does it feel to lead the team to the first win of the season!_

And how the football captain would turn to them, photogenic and telegenic and flashing his dazzling smile, his perfect answer.

Harry, of course, despises reporters.

Stepping out of the ice bath is almost as brutal as getting in, and he quickly ducks under the blistering hot spray of the shower-head. It takes long minutes for the glitter and hairspray to wash out, longer because Harry can't even lift an arm to scrub it off. He watches the suds run down the drain, taking with them the sweat on his skin and the grass stains on his knees from where he knelt before the terrifying tangle of Gabrielle's body. It all swirls down the drain, iridescent.

Thawed out, sloughed clean, he feels infinitely better. Being dressed in clean clothes makes him feel almost new again.

When he exits, it's to a deserted corridor. Outside the sky has turned a deep bruise colour, violet and lavender swallowing the last pale rays of sun. He's been inside for so long that the campus has cleared out, off to celebrate the first victory of the season.

_Gimme a V! Gimme an I! Rock that C-T-O-R-Y!_

"Well, that went better than I expected," says a voice so cool butter wouldn't melt in its mouth.

Harry doesn't reply.

"And you handled it better than I expected. Perhaps you _are_ a competent captain after all."

 _Did I? Am I?_ Then, for the first time, Harry remembers getting to his feet to speak to Dumbledore and McGonagall, offering to get on the phone with the Delacours, addressing the crowd to reassure them that while accidents do happen in cheer, they are rarely fatal.

Riddle's nostrils flare. "But maybe you should just give up," he muses, and Harry finally slows down. He lets out an angry, ragged laugh.

"And why would I do that?" he asks softly. He's barely even aware he's speaking.

The correct thing—the _smart_ thing—to do would be to back down. To say “maybe,” or even better, “I give up.” Boys like Riddle don’t like to play with dead things, with things that roll over and show their bellies.

But Harry feels worn thin, the fabric of his bravado stretched too taut.

"It's just cheerleading," Riddle says, like so many people have before him. He looks so cool, refreshed and immaculate, and then he catches Harry’s eye, and somehow, incredibly, even after a victory—a double victory—he still seems…

Almost _bored._ Riddle blinks, lazy and cat-like, like it's a done deal.

It devastates him. It makes him feel cold and dizzy and sick. All he wants is to go home and collapse in bed and sleep for an age. He wants the cool comfort of clean sheets over his aching limbs, and he doesn’t want to think about anything at all.

He turns away.

Riddle continues blithely, "All you have to do is wave pom-poms around to pop music, right?"

Harry can count on one hand the number of times in his life he has lost his temper. The consequences are always damning, so it catches him wholly by surprise—the hot, rising surge of his anger, the ball of rage gathering in his chest. There’s a rushing sound in his ears. 

He jerks back like he’s been struck. " You must be kidding me."

Riddle blinks at him then, a slow sweep of dark lashes against the perfect cut of his cheekbones, so handsome and nonchalant, and Harry, his shoulder smarting anew, _snaps_.

" _You—_ " he spits, suddenly so furious he feels incandescent, like a lit match to gasoline—"You and your entire football team are _lucky_ to have us. How dare you. How dare you insult us, how dare you even _dream_ of hurting us."

He storms forward, something white-hot and searing in his throat, and jabs a finger into Riddle’s chest. Distantly, Harry can't help but notice how tall and broad-shouldered the other captain is, how this close he smells like clean cotton and lemon verbena, and the errant thought makes him flush.

"Do you know what kind of standing we have as a squad?” he snarls, his eyes hot and throat tight and contracted, but Harry hasn’t cried in years. “Do you know that we're two-time National champions? _Do you even care?_ "

And Riddle goes quiet. He looks, for the first time, taken aback.

Thunder rumbles in the distance.

It all wells up in him then, like blood from a fresh wound—the failed routine, Gabrielle's fawn-like limbs splayed on the football field, his own terrifyingly precarious position. His head throbs. His throat feels thick with tears. He's so sick of swallowing it down, tired of taking all his yearning and pressing it beneath his letter jacket and cotton shirt and practice shorts.

"You’re so _stupid_. You know nothingabout cheer," Harry hisses, and he hates him so much it's a physical ache in his upper body. “And nothing about me.”

Riddle's staring at Harry like he’s never seen him before. Even his stance has changed somehow. He’s leaning towards Harry as if magnetised, even though he hasn’t moved a muscle.

Quietly, indignantly, he protests, "You don't know—"

" _I_ know your team has scraped by to Regionals once, but you have the nerve to think that all we do is shake our pom-poms for your pleasure? Fuck _you_ , Tom Riddle."

Riddle’s mouth falls open as Harry’s snaps shut. And then he pivots on his heel and stalks off, chest aching, jittery with adrenaline and the giddy, sickening thrill of finally, _finally_ speaking his mind.

Outside, it begins to pour. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> after my mermaid au i said no more soft tom riddle!!! scheming bastard tom riddle only!!!


End file.
